LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



# 4 

The Epworth League. 



ITS PLACE IN METHODISM. 



% Manual \ 

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BY 

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¥ 

REV. J. B. ROBINSON, D. D., Ph. D., 

Author of "Infidelity Answered ;" " Kmeline, or Home, Sweet 
Home;" " Preacher's Pilgrimage," Etc. 

With a m Introduction 

By REV. M. D. CARREL, 
Sup't Kpworth league Department, Western Methodist Book 
Concern. 



CINCINNATI: 
CRANSTON AND STOWE. 
NEW YORK: 
HUNT AND EATON. 
1890. 



Copyright 
BY CRANSTON & STOWE, 
1890. 



THE L1BHAKY 
OF CO»Q*I§f 



INTRODUCTION. 



THE Epworth League is a child of Provi- 
dence. That is to say, it is one of those 
providential movements which have character- 
ized the history of the Christian Church, and are 
nowhere more apparent than in the rise and 
progress of Methodism. One of our bishops has 
well said that the 15th of May, 1889, with the 
results of its Cleveland Conference, will stand 
in Methodist history beside that Christmas-day 
of 1784, on which the Methodist Episcopal 
Church was organized. The Church was ripe 
for the Epworth League. Methodist condi- 
tions demanded it. And when the fullness of 
time had come, quietly, and withal so suddenly 
as to be a surprise and wonder to most, it 
took its place in our Methodist household. 

To be sure, the Epworth League is one 
phase of a Church-w T ide movement of moment- 
ous significance, looking toward the organiza- 
tion and more thorough enlistment of young 
Christians in Christ's w T ork. It can not be 
said that the idea had its birth with the Ep- 
worth League ; nor, strictly speaking, with any 

3 



4 



INTRODUCTION. 



other modern young people's society. The 
idea of organizing and training the young is 
as old as the Church itself. But, studied as a 
phase of the modern movement, the Epworth 
League must have the credit of pioneering the 
way in a direction which we predict other 
branches of the movement will take ultimately. 
It organizes and works within strictly denom- 
inational lines. The value of its work is not 
yet appreciated by the Church at" large, but it 
certainly will be by and by. It can not be 
that this great movement, with its vast possi- 
bilities, will result in nothing better than one 
great, unwieldy, undenominational, and there- 
fore indefinable and irresponsible, organization. 
For the best results — for any permanent re- 
sults of value — such a movement must concen- 
trate its energies, project its enthusiasm and 
power, along lines of denominational effort and 
method. Where are the flourishing undenom- 
inational missions, or religious enterprises of 
any kind ? And who, to-morrow, will care for 
those which, under the fostering of the " de- 
nominations," scatter their benedictions in all 
lands, except young Methodists and Presby- 
terians and Baptists are taught to love and 
cherish their own? Methodists think there 
are elements of peril in unduly loosening the 



INTRODUCTION. 



5 



bonds of denominational loyalty. And so, al- 
though for the time they are compelled to go 
alone, they chose a conservative middle path. 
They believe in and intend to cultivate the 
broadest charity consistent with loyalty to their 
own mission. But while they "live to love 
every Church which exalts Christ" they " live 

TO MAKK THEIR OWN CHURCH A POWER IN 

the world." They believe that their sons 
and daughters will accomplish most for Chris- 
tianity's common cause as they are taught to 
build most carefully and wise_ly upon their own 
heritage of responsibility. 

But so believing, we must build carefully, 
wisely. Our plans must be the pattern shown 
us in the Mount. To know the providential 
design of this organization, and then how best 
to apply its energies to Christ's work, is a great 
problem. We are all eager for anything which 
can throw light upon that problem. I think 
this little volume — as nearly, perhaps, as any 
volume, little or big, can — gives us the key 
to its solution. For, after all, when a few 
foundation principles have been laid down, 
it remains for each pastor, with the help of his 
consecrated young people, to find the practical 
solution. Conditions differ so widely that, as to 
details, one set of plans will not do for all. 



6 



INTRODUCTION. 



This little " manual " aims to show us these 
foundation principles. It points out the de- 
sign of the League, and tells us how it fits into 
the economy of the Church. To read it, is to 
have a broader conception of the possibilities 
of this marvelous movement, and a clearer con- 
ception of its relation to every part of the 
Church's organism. We predict for it a wide 
Epworth reading. Its instruction will guide 
to better methods. Its exalted ideal of young 
Christian character, involving an all-mastering 
love for Christ and loyalty to his Church, will 
inspire young hearts with loftiest purpose, and 
so help into realms of power this latest child 
of Methodism— " The Epworth League." 

MORTON D. CARREL. 
Cincinnati, Ohio, August 7, 1890. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Introduction, 3 

Historical Introduction, 9 

I. The League an Aid to the Pastor, 11 

II. The League an Auxiliary to the Church, . . 18 

III. The League an Educator, 26 

IV. The League an Indoctrinator, 31 

V. The League a School of Christ, 38 

VI. The League an Inspiration, 46 

VII. The League a Promoter of Industry, .... 54 

VIII. The League a Companionship, 60 

IX. The League a Brotherhood, 71 

X. The League a Promoter of Unity, 78 

XI. The League an Entertainment, 84 

XII. The League a Guide, 91 

XIII. The League a Memento Eternal, 99 

XIV. The League the Light Brigade of the Church 

Militant, 104 

XV. The League the Supply of Certain Unpro- 
vided Wants, 109 

XVI. Conclusion, 113 

Appendix, 117 

7 



Historical Introduction. 



THE name Epworth is memorable in the 
history of Methodism. Samuel Wes- 
ley, a rector in the Church of England, 
father of John and Charles Wesley, in 1693 
published a poetical "Life of Christ." He 
dedicated it to Queen Anne, who, in re- 
turn, conferred on him the pastorate of the 
church and living at Epworth, Lincoln 
County, England. Here were born to 
Samuel and Susanna Wesley, among other 
children, John and Charles. In honor of 
these, distinguished founders of Methodism 
the Epworth League has been named. 

The Sabbath-school, common to several 
Churches, was the first general organization 
in the Church for the religious instruction 
of youth. Of late it has appeared that a 
youths' society, involving work, was de- 
manded by the greater evangelizing activi- 
ties of our time. In response to this de- 

9 



IO HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 

in and there grew up spontaneously, in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, several so- 
cieties — some local, some general. But the 
young people, as well as the fathers, saw 
that unity was vital. Hence, at a meeting of 
delegates from these several societies, held 
at Cleveland, Ohio, May 14 and 15, 1889, 
amid remarkable Christian harmony and 
unanimity, it was resolved to form one so- 
ciety for the entire Church, combining the 
excellencies of all. The new society is 
called the Epworth League. In the fol- 
lowing Manual are named some of the prin- 
cipal features of the plans and work of the 
League. 



Chapter I. 



THE LEAGUE AN AID TO THE PASTOR. 
I ^HAT is the relation of the League 



V V to the preacher? It is his efficient 
and practical helper. The pastor is held 
directly responsible for all religious serv- 
ices connected with his charge. All plans 
must be in harmony with his plans. While 
his chief work is to save souls, yet this in- 
directly involves a variety of duties from 
those almost purely secular up to the most 
spiritual possible to man. He must not 
only build churches and raise benevolences, 
but on the highest mountain of responsi- 
bility he must point the dying to the Lamb 
of God. 

The pastor's duties are so multiplied, 
both as defined in the Discipline and spon- 
taneously vSpringing out of his profession, 
that he could clearly increase his usefulness 
if some division of labor could array as his 
aids other helpers and all helpers, 




12 



THE KP WORTH LEAGUE. 



Wisely and opportunely the League 
comes to the pastor's aid. He has scarcely 
a burden that the League can not lighten. 
Each of its six departments assumes di- 
rectly some part of the pastor's cares and 
burdens. He is put in control of a trusty 
company of fellow-workers, greatly increas- 
ing his power for usefulness. 

The League helps the pastor to system- 
atize his work, and put in action his co- 
workers under his personal supervision. 
There is a remarkable similarity between the 
League's schedule of department duties de- 
fined in Leaflet No. 2 * and pastoral duties 
as defined in the Discipline. While the 
official work of the pastor is technically 
his own, yet it may be amazingly eased and 
advanced by these young colleagues. Does 
the pastor need an immediate substitute to 
care for a religious interest, he has but to 
summon Department I. Does he wish to 
push evangelism into the by-ways, then 
Department II is his ever-ready auxiliary. 
Would he augment usefulness by libraries, 

*See Appendix I. 



AN AID TO THE PASTOR. 1 3 

lyceums, and lectures, Department III is 
his cheerful co-worker. Does he desire a 
well-trained committee to execute his plans 
in any field, he is at once supplied by call- 
ing upon the proper department of the 
League. The League does not baptize, but 
it leads to the pastor's hands many a sub- 
ject for baptism. It does not administer 
the Lord's Supper, but it keeps nourishing 
scores of struggling souls, so that they are 
faithful candidates at the Lord's Supper. 
The pastor of to-day is to be a living, mov- 
ing multum in parvo, and the League be- 
comes to him hands and feet, eyes and ears. 

The League prepares the way for the 
pastor. This is markedly true with out- 
siders and seekers. The League can often 
reach them easier and sooner than the 
pastor. A marvelous revolution is enlarg- 
ing the numbers of those who are God's 
best co-workers. In Judaism the priest 
was left almost alone with things pertain- 
ing to the sanctuary. But, in our day, 
pastor and people, young and old — and 
especially the young — aim to be active 



14 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



workers in the whitening harvest. Public 
opinion demands it. Instead of the exclu- 
sive priest, the rank and file of the Church 
militant is found eager for the work of soul- 
saving. This has vastly multiplied efficient 
spiritual helpers. 

Another secret of the ages has come 
into the light in our day, viz. : Christian 
enjoyment and growth are in exact pro- 
portion to personal Christian work. Hith- 
erto the Lord has had too many silent 
partners — if, indeed, a silent partner of the 
Lord is not a myth. Now there is a grand 
advance all along the line. What Juda- 
ism prepared for was realized after John 
the Baptist, under Christ ; and what nine- 
teen Christian centuries have been prepar- 
ing for is now bursting into a realization. 
" The kingdom of heaven is at hand." The 
League is the glorious device for pouring 
holy oil upon all, and consecrating the 
ransomed millions to minister in his name 
to the unsaved. When the League be- 
comes such a training-school of the mi- 
nor prophets that it will resolve all into 



AN AID TO THE PASTOR. . 1 5 

prophets, then every pastor will be wanted 
as a lieutenant-general of this army of 
prophets. In that day the army of the 
Lord will be invincible. 

It was long ago discovered in political 
economy that the detailed minutiae of pro- 
cesses required vastly more time and labor 
than the few well-defined and systematized 
leading processes. An ingenious French- 
man, who was intrusted by the Govern- 
ment with a wilderness of statistics to 
develop, engaged two or three expert mathe- 
maticians at high salary to unravel the 
more complex general problems ; for the 
further elimination of these problems to sim- 
ple formulas he employed a much larger 
number of less skillful and less expensive 
accountants ; and, finally, a much larger 
number of men versed in the simple pro- 
cesses of addition and multiplication, re- 
duced these formulas to figures. This de- 
vice of the Frenchman is commended as a 
master achievement. The Epworth League 
is precisely such an array of workers of va- 
ried talent and taste. First, the pastor is 



l6 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

intrusted with the entire problem of saving 
souls; then come Leagues, departments, 
sub-departments, members. It is of the 
first importance that people in this world 
find a congenial realm for the employ- 
ment of their talents. It is as important 
that the fifty or one hundred League work- 
ers find that field which will bear most 
fruit for each, and yield most individual 
growth, as it is that the pastor be stationed 
in his proper field. 

Christ formed the first Epworth League 
when he found men standing idle in the mar- 
ket-places, and said : " Go ye also into the 
vineyard.' ' In that group were future pas- 
tors, and all the major and minor workmen 
which Christ needed. And when their field 
was reached, each pair of hands was doubt- 
less directed to that rank of the harvesters 
where he could best achieve. I imagine 
some must entwine the tendrils, some must 
lift the trailing vines to the strong supports, 
some must prune the useless abundance, 
some must carry home the red-ripe grape to 
the wine-press of God. But beyond these 



AN AID TO THE PASTOR. 1 7 

fields of our earthly Leagues and labors 
all the rewards of immortality allure. Pas- 
tor and people will receive their daily wages 
for faithfulness below. Not the least to the 
faithful worker will be the witnesses who 
will say: "I was hungry, and ye gave me 
meat." 



Chapter II. 



THE LEAGUE AN AUXILIARY TO THE CHURCH. 

HOW does the League help the Church? 
A large proportion of public sermons 
is, by necessity, directed to obdurate hearts 
of unbelief. People grow up without re- 
ligious decision because somebody thought 
them not old enough yet to become Chris- 
tians. There is a sort of mistaken opinion 
that Satan ought to have as fair play with 
young souls as the Lord. There is also a 
prevalent opinion that little children should 
not hasten into a religious life, an opinion 
of which Satan is, no doubt, the author. 
It is certainly true that Christ has a right 
to this world — to all human thought and 
worship from the cradle to the grave. It 
is also true that Satan should be granted 
no interval during youth in which he may 
sow corruption. While infants are all born 
in sin because of Adam's lineage, yet in 
Christ the Adamic corruption is all washed 
18 



AN AUXILIARY TO THE CHURCH. 19 

away. Then, in children up to the point 
of accountability, no repentance is essen- 
tial. Precisely at this point the little child 
heart should be so kept full of love, faith, 
song, religious instructions, and so sur- 
rounded, that it will never sin, and never 
grow hard, and never need to bitterly re- 
pent. This is the theory on which Christ 
would form his Church. " Suffer little chil- 
dren to come unto me." Thus little Sam- 
uel, son of Elkanah, was kept sinless ; and 
he heard at the first consciousness the first 
call, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." 
True, his environments were unusual, in 
the temple, where only sacrifice and wor- 
ship met the eye and the heart. True, 
most children are more exposed to tempta- 
tion and evil example than Samuel was. 
Yet is not a Christian home expected to be 
a holy of holies? Is not mother the most 
sacred priestess of them all? Is not the 
Sabbath-school a place of purity exclu- 
sively ? Is not the Church to be a Zion as 
clean as the temple? Yes. Then here is, 
additionally, the Epworth League, in which 



20 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



is the " milk of the Word for babes.' ' Ex- 
actly upon this plan, which is the Lord's 
plan, the League endeavors to find and or- 
ganize children and youth, in order to 
bridge this fearful chasm. To run the 
gauntlet of Satanic influence from the age 
of moral responsibility to the age of ma- 
turity, in order to gratify a mistaken public 
opinion, is, alas! the children's valley and 
shadow of death. And many a little moral 
carcass strews the way. Who, then, can 
deny this Church auxiliary, the League, 
where the valley will be filled with helping 
angels, and where the shadows will be 
chased away? 

It is a sad fact that the Church-rolls 
of all denominations contain many nom- 
inal, useless, inconsistent members, who 
are a burden of discount. Why? In most 
part, because neglected youth has given 
them a defective character, which clings 
to them through life. People are so sus- 
ceptible to infirmity! Yet such is the in- 
exorable law of habit, that added infirm- 
ities assume form in the void of early life, 



AN AUXILIARY TO THE CHURCH. 21 

when they ought to have been bent by 
Epworth Leagues and Sabbath-schools into 
clean, strong Christian manhood, without 
infirmity. Thus apparent infirmity is often 
only the later harvest of sin. It is a most 
stubborn fact that when the church-bells 
ring out for the evening of regular prayer, 
that Protestant Angelus to Christ himself, 
but one in four or one in ten comes to the 
place of prayer. 1 ' Where are the nine?" 
They are victims to the sins and habits 
that came in tender age, when they 
were waiting without the temple, among 
the unsaved, until public opinion ac- 
corded them sufficient age to be Church 
members. 

When the place of prayer and class is 
reached, there is another class of worship- 
ers who are strangely dumb before the 
Lord. Here they are as silent as death, 
although elsewhere they can explain most 
eloquently, with loosened tongue, why they 
can not speak or pray in church. O con- 
sistency ! Half the eloquence of their apol- 
ogies poured out at the prayer-meeting, in 



22 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



devotion before God, would secure them 
the reputation of Apollos, while their relig- 
ious enjoyment, spiritual power, and growth 
in grace would make them modern Daniels. 
But what is their disease? Moral paral- 
ysis of the heart, superinduced by moral 
inaction in youth. 

Our prescription for them shall be rad- 
ical. We must not tamper with the vital 
functions of soul. Let the full sunlight of 
grace directly into the infant heart, keep it 
shining later in the child heart, let its 
zenith beams point shadowless into the 
youth heart, and all the way the product 
will be a ripe Christian. He will have a 
loose tongue at the hour of prayer, and a 
hundred-fold of power to work and win 
souls. A dumb, stay-at-home Christian is 
a monstrosity, and a formalist in heaven is 
a myth. 

While Christ uttered a clearly-tested 
adage, "He that is not with me is against 
me," it would appear that nominal Chris- 
tians are on a strike to compel Christ to 
recognize a third or intermediate class on 



AN AUXILIARY TO THE CHURCH. 2 3 

the moral fence, yet sitting with their faces 
Zionward. 

What shall be done? Bring on the 
Church's opportune auxiliary, the League. 
Let the junior League emarginate with 
home and mother. Diffuse truth through 
the kindergarten age in pictures and 
simple, easy, attractive lessons. Bring 
alongside the choice associations of pure 
hearts. Sweeten the service with innocent 
amusements and picnics. Beguile the te- 
dium with enchanting music. Fill the 
mental void with declamations and read- 
ings and pure literature. The League is 
like a feast with six courses, where no taste 
is unprovided for in the upbuilding of vig- 
orous character. 

O, if this plan, as the Church's aux- 
iliary, could embrace all the dear children, 
and the League could have its perfect work, 
there would be a moral revolution in the 
manner of receiving Church members ! 
There would be less of that long agony of 
repentance for hardened sinners, and more 
of that easy transfer from the innocent 



24 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



ranks of those who have known the Lord 
from childhood. There would be fewer 
assuming those burdens of dumb sheep 
who, in comparative weakness and worth- 
lessness, go mourning uselessly all their 
days, and there would be more of the vig- 
orous Church workers, teal soldiers, posi- 
tive loosened tongues never palsied by 
forced or voluntary silence. Bring the aux- 
iliaries to the front. 

It is manifest that the value of a new 
Church member will largely depend upon 
the character of his previous training. 
That is, a League-trained member is likely 
to be more skilled and useful than one 
from Christless antecedents. There is a 
mock heroism which almost glories in a 
previous life of shame, and courts that no- 
toriety which its exhibition procures. But, 
after all, the Church loves to trust and 
honor a well-rounded Christian who has 
walked with God all his days. 

Thus the Epworth League is making 
"his paths straight'' for the young pilgrim. 
There need be no long, dark paths of sin; 



AN AUXILIARY TO THE CHURCH. 2 5 

no wide, fateful deserts of moral dearth ; no 
dangerous, hair-breadth escapes from yawn- 
ing chasms ; but simply one straight path, 
delightful to child and man, up to the 
very gates of immortality. 



Chapter III. 



THE I^AGUE AN EDUCATOR. 

INFANT minds are hopeful blanks. As 
the artist spreads his plates with ten- 
der chemicals, sensitive to the sunlight, 
so the Maker of childhood has endowed 
child natures with delicate susceptibilities. 

Childhood needs to be set rejoicing in 
pure social sunlight. It requires to be deliv- 
ered from trashy and evil literature, as it 
is saved from the packages marked " arsenic " 
on the high shelf. The proper device for 
three-fourths of the books of our day would 
be a skull and cross-bones, with a coffin 
in the background. The Church, which 
has proven its efficiency by passing up 
to the Church triumphant, for one hundred 
and twenty-five years, a daily average of 
seventy souls, is by these fruits divinely 
acknowledged to be fitted for the guidance 
of its children to Christian maturity, to 

usefulness, and to the same Church tri- 
26 



AN EDUCATOR. 



27 



umphant. We may safely trust God and 
his agency of the wise and holy leaders 
whom he has called to direct the affairs of 
the League. These leaders have deliber- 
ated, prayed, toiled, and finally system- 
atized the excellent plans of the Epworth 
League. And we now speak of it as an 
educator. 

Head and heart are inseparable. A 
division between them would create two 
monstrosities. Valuable as is the common- 
school system, yet it tends to separate head 
and heart. No wonder these little mon- 
strosities of the land multiply into heartless 
skeptics, atheists, law - breakers, misan- 
thropes. The common ground of citizen- 
ship, as claimed by the worst element and 
accepted by State courts, is acceptable to 
heathen, pagan, Mohammedan, Jew, bar- 
barian, or Mormon, because all are citizens 
and all tax-payers. Hence the moral teach- 
ing of the common schools is a compromise 
on a very low plane with all these. The 
Bible, though the greatest light, is as much 
rejected from our common schools as it 



28 



THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



was from the French nation in its bloody 
revolution. Just here the Church has 
rushed to the rescue, ever jealous of its 
Bible. Among its many plans for fortify- 
ing the breach, it has devised the curriculum 
of the Epworth League.* It has sweetened 
mental culture with Bible truth and grace. 
It has furnished the entire, threefold being 
with a healthful and satisfying portion. 
Devotion is inclined upward by the pro- 
vision for prayer and Christian song. Books 
reflecting Bible truth, whose contents are 
pure and sanctified, are made attractive to 
the young. The Epworth Herald, a clean, 
neat periodical, is the organ of the League. 
With these provisions for mental develop- 
ment, the young are fed on a safe and de- 
lightful portion. The League recognizes 
and provides for the entire complex being. 
Those qualities in youth which are devout, 
looking Godward ; those which are reveren- 
tial to parent and to age ; those which are 
reflective and logical, holding in circum- 
spection universal nature ; those which are 

*See Appendix II. 



AN EDUCATOR. 



29 



social, craving the voice and sympathy of 
humanity ; and those which are economic, 
making reasonable response to the queries, 
"What ye shall eat, what ye shall drink, 
and wherewithal ye shall be clothed," — are 
all harmoniously blended in the studies and 
readings of the League. Young people are 
more intolerant of inaction than are those 
of riper years. In fact, in the young is a liv- 
ing impetuosity that demands action, while 
the excess of wear in age craves passiveness. 
Hence the important problem is to wisely 
direct and supervise the action. Young 
life hungers and thirsts for truth, for facts, 
for the strange things in the realm of the 
unknown. Wisely the fathers of the Church 
have appointed the League, and set it in 
motion to teach every child and feast it to 
satisfaction amid the miracles of revealed 
truth, from the hands of Jesus, who blesses 
and breaks the feast. Ever since there was 
an Epworth home of the Wesleys, there has 
been the consecration of books and songs, 
and types and papers, and printing-presses 
and schools. 



30 THE EP WORTH LEAGUE. 

One of the important cautions to the 
inexperience of childhood is, to be guarded 
against the secret poison lurking in much 
that is printed, and made enticing with 
pictures and morocco binding. The very- 
salutary selection of books which the League 
presents for educating the young is not 
only an antidote to these lurking poisons, 
but a moral tonic to make life and growth. 



Chapter IV. 



THE LEAGUE AN INDOCTRINATOR. 

" A N enemy hath sown tares and the 
beautiful harvest-field is corrupted. 
How did it happen? Somebody is to 
blame. While the husbandmen slept, it 
was perpetrated. "Ye are the husband- 
men." The Church assumes the responsi- 
bility of strict watching. The Church is 
responsible for the inculcation of right doc- 
trine among the young. There are many, 
many young lives poisoned by false doc- 
trine, and they become moral wrecks. Off 
the track ; on the down-grade ; a collision ; 
a crash ; a carnage ; a conflagration ; fu- 
nerals ; finis. This is a short tragedy of 
seven chapters and a sequel — eternal death. 

Why should the child of many prayers 
become an infidel, and start a race of 
infidels? Unfaithfulness in the watchmen 
admitted the wary enemy ; and behold, 
tares ! Lincoln's precious life might have 

31 



32 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



been preserved but for the carelessness of 
his body-guard, who was fascinated with 
the play, and strayed away from his post, 
while the desperado crept in and murdered 
the President. Why do so many young men 
stray off among rationalists, freethinkers, 
and the irreligious? Why so many crush 
parental hearts and hopes by wandering 
into bald heterodoxy, so that once hopeful 
lives become sheer blanks forever? But 
what can you expect from gardens of ten- 
der tropical flowers and precious fields of 
golden wheat and corn, if the fences are 
all torn down, while swine and cattle are 
freely admitted? Is it not equally reason- 
able to suppose that precious young souls, 
unguarded by any restraints, will fall a 
prey to every spiritual foe ; that hungry, 
longing souls, unprovided with toothsome, 
wholesome doctrine, will feed upon husks, 
or even that which may be sweetened 
poison ? 

The fruits of the field, the flowers of 
the garden, and the cattle of the stall are 
more faithfully dealt with. Men swarm to 



AN INDOCTRINATOR. 33 

agricultural fairs, read agricultural jour- 
nals, and apply agricultural chemistry, in 
order to insure beneficent results. Shall 
the drawing-room be wholly transformed 
into a ball-room? Shall cards and wine 
freely tempt with their allurements ? Shall 
the bar-room, the store-box, and the street- 
corners bid in competition for the evening 
hours of our sons? No. Too much of 
inestimable value is at stake. 

There is an age between parental con- 
trol and the later influence of wife or hus- 
band, that is flippantly denominated the 
"wild-oats" period. It is a most dangerous 
age. It is an interregnum of social an- 
archy. To bridge this age-chasm safely is 
a most sacred obligation upon the fathers, 
to the end that the children may walk it 
in safety. To clothe truth with charms, to 
environ purity with sweet restraints, to en- 
rapture youthful taste with wholesome feast, 
to fix the admiration of young lives upon 
the ideal pictures and models of perfect 
manhood and womanhood, is the important 
indoctrinating function of the League. It 



34 



THE KPWORTH LEAGUE. 



presents plans of connteraction against fash- 
ionable temptations; it proposes to pre- 
occupy body, mind, and spirit with holy 
duty and healthful exercise ; it endeavors 
to establish the faith upon the Word, and 
to transplant doctrines from the nurseries 
of inspiration, as written by the Spirit to 
concrete, living souls, until these doctrines 
become a part of the being. 

While the League's plans and provis- 
ions for this indoctrination are wise and 
ample, their execution, like the saving plans 
of the Church itself, are intrusted to human 
instrumentalities. 

It is valuable to a youth to spend his 
activities and faith in the channels where 
the habits are to be formed, and the pure 
life is to be most useful and safe. " Who- 
soever shall do my will, shall know of the 
doctrine." Doing and knowing are to each 
other as cause and effect. I know of some 
excellent building-stone which must be 
guarded from freezing when first quarried ; 
but after drying, it becomes solid and in- 
vulnerable to frost. I know also of tender 



AN INDOCTRINATOR. 



35 



young souls which must not be exposed to 
temptation until established. Their endur- 
ance is quite limited at first"; but later, 
being inured, their resistance of evil is 
confirmed. I know a League of thirty 
members. Some are w r eak, none are strong. 
They provoke each other to good works. 
Six committees report weekly progress. 
Some victories are achieved, some trophies 
gained. The triumph of each is the re- 
joicing of all. Coronation is sung in uni- 
son. Thirty lives rise higher, and are 
quickened in a moral advance. This pro- 
cess is repeated fifty-two weeks in a year. 
Truth and beauty are becoming fruitful 
old trees in the moral garden. It is an 
astonishment how abnormal and contracted 
is a depraved heart. It is amazing how 
sin abounding absorbs every mental and 
moral substance within ; so much so, that 
no pure, noble impulse can spring up. 
The law of habit has been reversed, and 
evil asserts itself and extends its sway from 
center to circumference. 

The law of increase in inner faculties is 



36 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

a good law, per se ; but it must work in 
accord with the constitution of our moral 
being. Analogically, botany illustrates our 
point. The wild rose has only five feeble 
petals in its corolla ; but yonder magnificent 
multiform rose of our garden-wall is the pro- 
duct of the wild rose, amplified by cultiva- 
tion. Divergency, and consequent enlarge- 
ment, is the law of growth ; but to render 
the enlargement in youthful lives perpetual 
is the victory of indoctrination. Advance 
to-day, and fortify before night-fall. Repeat 
the same process each day, and you not 
only execute a brave march, but you also 
train veterans. This is the indoctrination 
of the Church militant. Our League is not 
a corps of observation, but an army of 
occupation. 

The League promotes stability of char- 
acter. The " line-upon-line " process of 
old Israel is the sole method of rendering 
morals invincible. While patents float short 
methods to all the technics of manual activ- 
ity, the technic of spiritual expansion and 
settlement uses only the old patent of Moses 



AN INDOCTRINATOR. 



37 



and the prophets as unrivaled — "line upon 
line." If the League deviated from the 
Bible in this regard, the League would merit 
repudiation. For the Bible and the Church 
being of divine origin, and therefore com- 
plete, would suffer no new doctrine to su- 
persede what God has provided. Modern 
patents on religion are inventions of the 
Evil One. But the League will continue to 
indoctrinate in the old ways and the old 
truths. 



Chapter V. 



THE LEAGUE A SCHOOL, OF CHRIST. 
HE range of human possibilities is so 



sweeps all the way from an angel to a 
devil. It is easy to be a devil, for the in- 
side heart will second the call of the out- 
side tempter ; but to become an angel, the 
inner life resists the outer. Sleep and un- 
concern will produce an incarnate demon. 
In a word, absolute inaction and indiffer- 
ence will grow rank demons ; but it requires 
eternal vigilance, faith, and prayer to expel 
the evil spirits and substitute virtue, until 
the life is like that of the beautiful Christ. 
From small to great is both proof and direc- 
tion of growth ; but from great to small is the 
destiny of decay and degeneracy. Shrink- 
age is the law of devils ; expansion pre- 
sages life and growth. 

Which road shall be pointed out to our 
children ? Shall the prophets have a sue- 




fearfully dangerous. It 



A SCHOOL OF CHRIST. 



39 



cession among us? Shall the Church of 
to-morrow have its ranks recruited, which 
are depleted by the translations of to-day? 
Shall the infants that brought so much joy 
and love during their innocency and help- 
lessness, be now turned adrift, under the 
guidance of heartless enemies, into the 
haunts of vice and temptation? The Church 
and the parent, in part, intrust the problem 
to the League. Here are the young, help- 
less germs most precious, the hope of the 
Church and the world, the candidates for 
mansions, and the nuclei for giants and 
heroes of moral power and grandeur. These 
souls must be trained; for they are the 
purchased lambs of Christ. This is the 
sublimest work ever committed to another. 
Yonder hundred acres of blank fallow of 
pulverized soil, it is true, has been sowed 
with wheat ; but the eye can see in it no 
future except barren soil continued. Faith, 
however, has heard of the sown seed; and 
faith beholds a yellow harvest, and faith's 
vision also discovers full granaries and 
luscious loaves. So the fathers and mothers 



40 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



look to the field of childhood and youth ; 
and while their prayers and faith are zeal- 
ously alive, they bestow a most sacred trust 
upon the League as guardians of the com- 
ing harvest of souls and the coming eter- 
nity of joy. This is Christ's school. Now, 
ye teachers, use supernal wisdom. There 
is a first desire — it is an inquiry for truth. 
The entire swarm of young minds is on the 
alert. The spirit of inquiry is awakened. 
Be steady, for the moment is critical. Now 
paint virtue with irresistible charms ; show 
the hideousness of vice. Steady : your im- 
pressions have gone home. There is an 
easy highway into every heart. Now intro- 
duce Christ within. A moral revolution 
is on. Hasten each young hand and heart 
to " crown him Lord of all." There he is, 
enthroned within. How beautiful ! how 
heavenly ! Now build up the environments. 
Make them so high that demons can never 
overleap them. Now create the life-giving 
vitality, or rather promote the conditions 
that will enable Christ, the blessed Creator, 
to breathe forever fresh vitality. There ! 



A SCHOOL OF CHRIST. 41 

that is a success. Now your growing im- 
mortals must be fed and feasted. Bring on 
the dishes. Let every course be daintily 
sweetened with the health of grace. Re- 
member, there must be no lurking germ 
of disease introduced by the feast. There ! 
that meal is most wholesome for upbuild- 
ing moral giants. It is to be repeated until 
the first old corn can be had in the Canaan 
of our immortality. But did you create at 
the feast the spirit and habit of thanks- 
giving? 

Children and youth are eminently teach- 
able. If they be thus safely leagued with 
Jesus and taught at his feet, now as a 
foundation of faith, the superstructure that 
will rise will be gloriously towering. How 
well the Epworth League's six departments 
correspond with Peter's eight degrees of 
Christian growth — faith, virtue, knowledge, 
temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly- 
kindness, charity ! The former is a fair dupli- 
cate of the latter. By the time the Junior 
League is prefixed for the children, the 
sameness is striking. Mind you, growth in 



42 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

this school does not imply passiveness — 
like a motionless tree — but impulsive de- 
sire and longing effort, and gradual, per- 
manent enlargement of soul and mind. 
Mustard-seed faith is to become, by enlarge- 
ment, a mountain-mover. That virtue, at 
first microscopic, is to become the bones of 
a spiritual constitution. The minimum of 
initial knowledge is to expand into the de- 
vout sage. Growing temperance must be- 
come able to reject all the harmful and 
moderate all the healthful. Patience must 
go on unto perfection, until it gladly suf- 
fers for Christ's sake. Godliness, shadowy 
at first, is more and more a clear, Christ- 
like reflection. Brotherly-kindness begins 
to stretch itself away out of self, until it 
encompasses friends and foes. Charity pol- 
ishes away at the cap-stone of the super- 
structure, until hand and heart would reach 
out, like Jesus, to the salvation of the world. 
This is moral upbuilding in Christ's school. 

Every provision of the Epworth League 
conforms to and aids this law of progres- 
sion. The expanding of a young soul is 



A SCHOOL OF CHRIST. 



43 



not by external accretion, but by internal 
growth. A good school-master does not 
cram, but just puts the subject into favor- 
able conditions, and growth has a sort of 
spontaneity. Any growth is a miracle. It 
is all superhuman. It is more — a new cre- 
ation in man's utter helplessness and God's 
absolute authority. 

One of the objects of any school is dis- 
cipline. To fashion into true models of 
habit, to establish in virtue, to develop an 
actor always ready for the coming arena — 
in a word, to secure perfect, commanding, 
symmetrical manhood and womanhood — is 
the true object of any school. But a school 
of Christ has only one object; namely, to 
fashion Christ-like disciples. It is to un- 
fold Christian virtues, like fragrant and 
beautiful flowers, and turn out steady mas- 
ter-workers in Christ's vineyard. 

" Self-made" men are absurd apparitions. 
Even the fabled phoenix has ashes for a 
parentage. Yet the League, which can not 
create, so wisely fashions its plans that the 
members are co-workers with the Christ 



44 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

who does create. They stand obedient to 
the law of creation, where divine power can 
transform them into wider being. They 
can not help bnt grow, for they walk and 
act in obedience to the law of vitalization. 
Enrolled in this school, " Paul may plant, 
Apollos water, bnt God giveth the increase. " 
Self-made angels, self-made saints, and self- 
made Christians wonld be as novel a ghostly 
menagerie as wonld be the materialization 
of mythical gorgons, nymphs, elfs, and mer- 
maids. Every real Christian is a pupil in 
the school of Christ, and every saint in 
glory is a graduate of the same. The 
Church is a school of Christ, of which this 
world is an enchanting campus. The 
League is a primary department, and each 
one is honorably promoted who is worthy 
to take the vows of a faithful Church mem- 
ber. Let the Head-master issue the certifi- 
cates in his own name ! 

It is a true axiom that we study best 
what we love to study. We also study 
most devoutly under a master whom we 
love. The perfection of this school of 



A SCHOOL OF CHRIST. 



45 



Christ is best secured by getting the pupils 
in love with Christ. The League aims to 
do this. When the Christ-nature is painted 
so beautifully and presented so charmingly 
that one loves to hear Christ's words, in 
order to be with him — or, conversely, loves 
to be with him, in order to hear his words — 
that eagerness is the perfection of a scholar. 
To make such scholars is the aim of the 
League. 



Chapter VI. 



THE LEAGUE AN INSPIRATION. 

1SEE the waters go to rest, folded upon 
their own great bosom, and they breath- 
lessly rest until putrefaction covers them. 
And their green scum becomes their shroud 
of deathly stillness. But I hear the rum- 
blings of an inspiration. The freighted 
wind is coming on with breathing power. 
The waters are winnowed into waves. Now 
they break upon the shore in white-caps. 
Now billows chase billows across the deep 
undulations. The waters live in ponderous 
force, and in their new resurrection they 
have cast their green shroud upon the 
shore. 

I behold a dead calm in the forest. 
Every leaf seems laboredly gasping its sto- 
mata in the wilting crisp of dry, lifeless 
dissolution. Will it ever revive? Behold, 
a moist-laden breeze, the forerunner of 3 
storm of reviving carbon, ammonia, and 

46 



AN INSPIRATION. 



47 



rain ! Each limb bows in thanks. Each 
tree takes heart. Each twig shoots a jubi- 
lation. The forest is alive with hallelujahs ! 

Shall our boys and girls do less than the 
waters and the trees? Nature permits a 
fatal lullaby for our indolence and a pass- 
ive quietus for our inertness. Vice has its 
inspiration — shall not virtue be felt? Each 
child-nature is replete with the positives of 
evil to set soul and body in a whirl of 
activity. But pure virtue is negatived by 
passiveness and deadness. What breath of 
life and power shall breathe an inspiration 
upon our sons and daughters, that they 
spring into the love of a moral activity? 
Who can beautify the graces of righteous- 
ness, that children may long for them as 
charming gems? Who can bend young 
souls to goodness with a magnetic enthusi- 
asm? Who can bugle them away from the 
charms of vice? O, for an inspiration! 
The kingdom, power, and glory are of the 
Lord ; but he works most marvelously 
through human instrumentalities. Two 
problems must be solved in unison : i. Young 



48 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



hands and hearts must be animated into 
positive action ; 2. They must be moved 
into virtuous action. 

First, let the social longing be gratified 
by clean, harmonious fellowship with the 
pure and good ; for youth thrives on socia- 
bility. This is the first step of the League ; 
namely, a society. Secondly, let the voice 
of song, prayer, and Scripture be intro- 
duced, to expel the spiritual foe. Let it be 
done with such pleasing charm that the ex- 
ertion shall articulate delightful jubilee for 
social and moral breezes and surroundings. 
This is the second step of the League. 
Thirdly, young constitutions love to be 
physically fed, and to luxuriate in banquets 
of mind where the voices and works of 
nature may be sympathetic and helpful. 
There are certain eras and visions of child- 
hood which no lapse of age can eradicate. 
Our little lives have stood on some moiint 
of vision or of transfiguration just as truly 
as James, Peter, and John stood on Her- 
mon ; and we have all been transfixed with 
rapture, until we have exclaimed: " Let us 



AN INSPIRATION. 



49 



make here three tabernacles — one for thee, 
and one for Moses, and one for Elias." 
And these mountain superstructures of the 
soul's vivid architecture have ever staid 
in present vision, defiant of years and 
decay. 

The League seizes upon these halcyon 
laws, and provides festival and picnic to 
enchant childhood in holy fascination, until 
the Ep worth love will clamor in delight: 
"Let us make here three tabernacles." 
The law of temperate eating and drinking 
remained pure after the Fall, to minister 
health and pleasure ; and that law was holy, 
just, and good. The picnic law survives 
the first sin. Eden itself was a picnic 
ground. Enoch held picnic with God. 
Christ met in picnic with the multitudes 
about the Sea of Galilee, and gained their 
hearts by feeding them in miracles. If 
there be any one inspiration that can set 
the intellections, the affections, and the vo- 
litions all aglow, so as to 

"Live through, all life, 
Extend through all extent," 
4 



50 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

it is the picnic and the stroll and the 
social cup of bliss in the woody green by 
the purling brook. 

"He went upon the strength of that 
meal forty days to Horeb, the mount of 
God." And, likewise, the Epworth League 
provides a table, from which ardent wor- 
shipers rise up to go to Zion, the mountain 
of God. 

That other problem which the equation 
of young hands involves, is work — work 
sanctified — relishing, gladsome work. It 
must be sweetened into a utility and de- 
light whose result is inspiring and satisfy- 
ing. Boys will take a thousand steps hunt- 
ing, fishing, flying a kite, or chasing a but- 
terfly, and would enjoy a thousand more, 
when ten steps of stale toil would weary. 
Here is just where any society may profit- 
ably expand into a committee of the whole 
to sweeten labor by mingling recreatipn. 
On this principle the League is a bona fide 
hive of workers. No drones need apply. 
With young hearts coming, freshly bathed 
in visions of glory and fountains of purity, 



AN INSPIRATION. 



51 



the inspired lips respond: "Here am I, 
Lord; send me." 

I see the League everywhere, trans- 
formed into a host, carrying evangels. 
Like the seventy, they go to the field of 
sowing and harvest. Other precious young 
life is perishing all around. Every funeral 
pile of the spiritually dead becomes a pul- 
pit for scattering these evangels. Every 
erring, dying soul is a congregation. Every 
Bible-call, or promise, or hope, is a theme 
of salvation. Nobly they " persuade men;" 
and the rich bounty of the harvest to be, 
who can estimate? The figures are for- 
warded to the recording angel. 

In the spring, when the sun genially 
shines, the workers all fly away from the 
bee-hive among the flowers for pollen and 
honey, until only the queen and the drones 
remain. So, when the "Sun of Righteous- 
ness" genially shines in life's spring-time, 
the King of kings sends forth the League- 
workers to gather in immortal souls, redo- 
lent with new-found grace and salvation. 
Their Christian presence is sweeter than 



52 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



honey to enrich the hive. O, what glorious 
pollen-dust is this! Surely, if an angel be 
inspired with the gardens of Hesperus, a 
true Leaguer must be inspired with fields 
of Christian work like this. 

But the " greatest of these is charity." 
When a human being can leave his own sor- 
rows in Gethsemane, and in sweet sympathy 
go forth to lift the fallen, bind up the bruised 
and broken, feed the hungry, breathe hope 
into the despairing, it is that supernal mys- 
tery into which " angels desire to look." 
When grace can transform our own poor 
lives into ministering spirits, we are nearest 
angels and nearest Christ. That capital 
mainspring of joy is reached when the life 
is gladly spent in works of charity. Such 
a life is a superior climax of earthly felicity. 
Hence, the fathers, who provided for the 
workings of the League, well devised when 
they included works of charity among the 
exercises. It is the true inspiration of Paul, 
which is to broaden sanctified energies be- 
yond self and home, seas and mountains ; 
beyond the seen and tangible ; beyond 



AN INSPIRATION. 



53 



walls and bounds — to the ends of the 
earth — for helping the family of man. 

Life must be inspired, and the breath 
that heaven offers is the true inspiration. 
But the skill in reaching all workers to in- 
sure the highest results depends much upon 
the skill of the leaders, the division of labor, 
mutual confidence, and other questions. 
Hence. the League arrays its forces under 
the skillful regime of prayer and faith. It 
most lovingly brings its influences to bear 
upon the unsaved. There is no salary to 
the workers save the hundred-fold of God, 
the clear conscience, and the growth in 
grace which attends obligations discharged. 



Chapter VII. 



THE LEAGUE A PROMOTER OF INDUSTRY. 

HOW far indolence became an outcrop 
of Eden lost, we can not aver. How 
much a conflict with the law of gravitation 
mingles honest weariness with native indo- 
lence, we dare not safely estimate, Whether 
pure spirit can be accused of laziness, we 
venture not to affirm. But we may safely 
say, that after the fall, with body and spirit 
in partnership, and with inclinations to 
evil rather than to good, humanity must 
be helped in order to reach a goal of pure 
good. Proneness and laziness hang heavily 
on any effort of progress, and moral gravity 
is against man. 

Philosophers, moralists, and sages have 
gone in search for incitements to indus- 
try, and they have been poorly rewarded. 
But in the religious universe is the dis- 
covery of a higher law. Gravitation of 
matter, bent of mind, sovereignty of will, 
54 



A PROMOTER OF INDUSTRY. 55 

all yield to the higher law. "I delight to 
do thy will, O God." . This delight was 
more than an experiment of David. It 
was his experience. It was the sample for 
the Christian during the ages. It was the 
normal operation of the higher law. 

How shall a delight to do God's will 
become the higher law to this world? The 
Epworth League rises to propose its plan. 
It engages to substitute industry in right- 
eous enterprises for the laziness which sin 
impresses. It aims to set the muscles in 
an agreeable motion of duty. It is to 
make duty so pleasant as to eliminate bur- 
dens from our tasks. It intends to beguile 
the powers of being into a right activity 
until the habit is formed. It puts the asso- 
ciation of duty in so charming a light 
that its members delight in duty. The 
activity that is begotten in the performance 
of pleasant duty only needs to have its mo- 
mentum transferred to all the duties of our 
lives. Thus industry is rendered into a 
permanent habit. The League has set the 
hand in motion, and the League has dis- 



56 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



covered and applied the exhortation of 
Solomon: " Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
to do, do it with thy might." This is 
the consummation of the habit formed in 
youth, the right culture of powers within. 
It is the secret of the League to awaken 
industry. 

But division of labor is the cardinal 
principle recognized by political economists 
in the world's marts of industry. This 
perfects each one in some branch of com- 
plex employments ; this perfects the pro- 
ducts, and this vastly facilitates final results. 
The League, true to political economy, di- 
vides its workers into six committees, and 
then subdivides each committee further, to 
reach the minutiae and produce perfect 
work. That God who appointed some 
evangelists and some teachers and some 
apostles, has created aptitudes, with likes 
and dislikes, among young people. In the 
enrollment of a League, diversity of talent 
is found for the amplest division into pleas- 
ant labor. Hearts are set throbbing and 
hands moving where preferred choice will 



A PROMOTER OF INDUSTRY. 57 

accelerate activity. The Church's coming 
evangelist, being divinely appointed, is 
starting in his favorite field in the League's 
" systematic visitation;'' the future teacher 
is here adjusted to the " Department of 
Literary Work;" if there be a coming 
apostle, his missionary spirit may kindle in 
the " Department of Christian Work;" a 
pastor in embryo will emerge from his 
chrysalis to his public estate in the League's 
" Bible study;" if there be an intended 
prophet, let him be made president of the 
League where his early divinations can 
assume form. Thus the League is a min- 
iature Zion, with its labors and triumphs, 
its defeats and its heavenly helps. 

It would be a sad picture to witness this 
vast aggregate of talent in a million of young 
Methodists running to waste. That very 
conservative compromise which admits 
young life to be debatable ground, and bar- 
gains with Satan on a policy of neutrality 
in regard to the young, is, in fact, a com- 
plete surrender to the enemy. 

Unless the Epworth League and the 



58 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



Sabbath-school foster the young in good- 
ness, Satan will rear them in iniquity. Who 
shall be the guiding power of this million — 
Jesus, or Apollyon? 

When we speak of the League as the 
promoter of industry, we recognize the law 
of increase in the ongoing enlargement of 
that industry. Statisticians of our country 
estimate the population of the Republic a 
century hence at one thousand millions. 
The increased power of each one, through 
the increase of knowledge^ machinery, and 
inventions, will be incalculable. The Ep- 
worth League of to-day may be regarded 
as only the root of a geometrical progres- 
sion of unknown but vastly great expo- 
nent. The industry of to-day will produce 
multiplied results to-morrow. As Moses 
and Paul set in action forces to bless the 
many millions of followers of Jesus in the 
Christian lands of this age, so we in turn 
labor for the miracle of a proportionate in- 
crease in the ages yet to be. Industry is 
contagious to the coming generations. How 
important that every influence be sanctified 



A PROMOTER OF INDUSTRY. 59 

by such helps as the League affords to those 
upon the threshold ! Association and proper 
rivalry promote industry. Chicago is Chi- 
gago because the inhabitants spur each 
other in enterprise. The best man in many 
a little village, having no rival, ceases to 
aspire and grow. But a city full has in- 
definite competition. The League is a 
moral corporation, in size like a city, each 
member moving his neighbor to higher 
achievements. Human models are salutary 
if they range in right line towards the di- 
vine model. Every true League-worker, 
striving to model after Christ, inspires his 
fellow to higher industry by himself walk- 
ing in right line in the footsteps of Christ. 



Chapter VIII. 



THE LEAGUE A COMPANIONSHIP. 

CRUSOE, on Juan Fernandez, is a com- 
panionless estate. Crusoe is therefore 
an impersonation of misery. Complete 
solitude in our prisons constitutes the final 
punishment in the descending gradation. 
Homelessness is not so inhospitable for 
want of meat, bread, and shelter, as for 
want of society. The horse, in his palatial 
stable, apart from his associates, will in- 
cessantly call, and pine away. So with 
nearly all the animals. Companionship in 
human life, and especially in young life, is 
intensely demanded. When great thoughts 
of mind and great affections of soul over- 
flow, there must be companions for a re- 
ceptacle. Hermits, being misanthropes and 
social maniacs, seek their own asylum in 
the deserts and forests. That wretch pos- 
sessed of devils and among the tombs, was 

a case of the social instincts abandoned, 

60 



A COMPANIONSHIP. 



61 



and his ostracized condition was the dire 
result. 

The native instincts of human nature 
are still unchanged. "It is not good for 
man to be alone. " In a new Western ter- 
ritory, where men, without wife, sister, 
mother, or daughter, brave the vast un- 
known alone, there is a partial abandon- 
ment of virtue, religion, morality, and civil- 
ization. No wonder moral anarchy results. 
It is a fearful risk of ambition. The saloon 
and the den of infamy know these facts, 
and they embellish gilded halls in marble 
mansions; they make siren music, and en- 
chant with winsome pictures; they put up 
in gay apparel mock companions, and paint 
the semblance of smiles in a painful en- 
deavor to reproduce the masquerade of 
happiness; they start the skeletons of sor- 
row in giddy motion down to death, and 
call it a dance of joy ; they drink the intox- 
icants of death, and call it the exhilarations 
of life. All this wickedness Satan and his 
clan devise and execute to deceive people, 
and especially young people, into the allure- 



62 THE EP WORTH LEAGUE. 



ments of a false companionship. The 
whole scheme is a Satanic device, seizing 
upon a vulnerable spot in our being — the 
social impulsion — by which to deliver our 
race to himself. 

How many lonely brothers might have 
been detained at home and saved, had there 
been loving and ingenious sisterly compan- 
ionship to outrival the spurious haunts of 
abandon ! How many young men are made 
to see, on the outside of these haunts, a 
sort of attractive daub of rheumatic joy, 
and their actors in agony of secret pain, 
aping purity and delight, but enticed within, 
become the victims of sin and death! O 
for some unstained and refined association 
to save the young, and make them ulti- 
mately the companions of angels! 

Did not the All-wise Christ foresee and 
prepare for these emergencies ? Did he not 
authorize his servants, by all the solemni- 
ties of the suspended sword of warning to 
stand as watchmen over the people in their 
danger? Directly at this threshold of the 
young people's peril, the Church stations 



A COMPANIONSHIP. 



63 



the Epworth League. Its provisions an- 
ticipate danger with salutary preventives. 
It offers an environment of virtuous com- 
panionship made useful, holy, and agree- 
able. The League invites and urges each 
youth, from his home nursery, to the full 
fellowship and sympathy of the worthy. 
It embarks all its forces in one common en- 
deavor for charming youth into higher and 
purer life. Its certificate of membership is 
an introduction to good society anywhere. 
It assures of good moral character in the 
marts of trade and the temples of truth. In 
the light of compulsion, the League makes 
its silken bond only a gossamer web to bind 
members into a life of virtue. But the 
friendship once begun, the bond of com- 
panionship grows stronger — strong as the 
love between David and Jonathan — strong 
as life. 

Cicero says: " There is in friendship a 
certain common bond, as it were, which 
renders lives into a oneness. " How beauti- 
fully this hunger of our nature, aching for 
companionship, is wholesomely fed by the 



64 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

provisions of the League ! How strong and 
abiding the moral constitution becomes 
where thus feasted! The League would 
bring all its members to the living fountains, 
to which Jesus invited the woman of Sama- 
ria at Jacob's well, saying: "The water that 
I shall give him shall be in him a well 
of water springing up into everlasting 
life." 

As a place to go, a place to be, a place 
to form friendships, a place to grow better, 
a place to achieve good, the League is our 
most inviting social center. To find part- 
ners in a lasting companionship, it is a 
moral bonanza. 

The Christian Intelligencer has well pic- 
tured this value of companionship in the 
appended story : 

A SISTER'S INFLUENCE. 

"If I only had a sister, Cousin Helen! 
But I am so lonely. You know, since 
mamma died, I have no one but papa and 
Hugh.'' 

The speaker was a young girl only 



A COMPANIONSHIP. 



65 



eighteen years of age, but her earnest face 
was expressive of strong character. 

"Why not let Hugh take a sister's 
place ?" suggested Cousin Helen. 

" How ?" And Margie's eyes really spar- 
kled. 

"Talk with him about the many things, 
both great and small, which interest you. 
Brothers like to feel that their sisters can 
trust them. Margie," continued Cousin 
Helen, w T ith a troubled look in her eyes, 
"there has recently been opened down town 
an elegant saloon which is called 'The 
Gilded Palace,' and last evening I over- 
heard a conversation between Hugh and 
his friend, Chester Winthrop, concerning it. 
Hugh evidently thought it an improper 
place for moral young men to frequent ; 
but Chester tried to overcome his scruples 
by informing him that there are rooms con- 
nected with the main saloon where moral 
men can assemble without coming in con- 
tact with anything objectionable, and that 
many of the best young men in town spend 
their evenings there. Pardon me, dear ; but 

5 



66 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



have you made home attractive to Hugh 
of late?" 

"I am afraid not, Cousin Helen; for I 
have fallen into the selfish habit of spend- 
ing much time in my own room. Thank 
you for your timely suggestions." 

That evening, as Hugh Nelson was pass- 
ing through the hall, hat in hand, he was 
surprised to hear his sister call out from 
the parlor : 

u Are you going out, Hugh?" 

"Ye-es," he answered, with hesitancy; 
for a glance into the pretty parlor, with its 
glowing grate-fire and open piano, made him 
almost wish that he was going to spend 
the evening at home. 

"Come in a little while, please, and help 
me select my new suit," pleaded Margie. 

u Your new suit?" echoed Hugh, with 
astonishment. " What do I know about 
girls' suits ?" 

"I believe you can help me," urged 
Margie, " for you display fine taste in the 
selection of your own clothes. You know, 
Hugh, I have not been accustomed to 



A COMPANIONSHIP. 



6 7 



choose for myself, and I miss mamma so 
much." 

There was a quiver in the voice that 
Hugh could not resist, and after hanging 
his hat on the rack he walked into the 
parlor, and was soon as deeply interested 
in the examination of dress samples and 
fashion-plates as his little sister could wish. 

From that time Margie followed her 
cousin's suggestion to the very letter. She 
laid her plans before Hugh as she would 
have done before an older sister, always 
asking his opinion concerning them, thereby 
making him feel that she needed his com- 
panionship and counsel. By this means 
there was gradually formed between this 
brother and sister a bond of love which 
was truly beautiful. 

Years passed, and one evening while 
Hugh and Margie Nelson were enjoying 
the quiet of their cozy parlor, Margie was 
startled by an exclamation of horror from 
her brother, and, on turning toward him, 
saw that he had dropped the evening 
paper, and had buried his face in his hands. 



68 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



Catching up the paper, she anxiously glanced 
down the column of daily news until she 
came to this item : 

"A young man, named Chester Win- 
throp, was fatally wounded last evening at 
the Gilded Palace saloon with a pistol- 
shot fired by David Holmes. Doubtless 
both of the young men were under the 
influence of liquor. " 

"Was Chester Winthrop once your 
friend?" asked Margie. 

"Yes," answered Hugh, as he raised a 
pale face from his hands ; "and but for the 
influence of my precious little sister I might 
be as he is to-night." 

Margie looked incredulous ; for Hugh 
had so many years been an earnest Chris- 
tian, that she could not imagine him as 
having sunk to such depths of degradation 
as Chester Winthrop evidently had done. 

"After mother died," resumed Hugh, 
with emotion, "I was sad and lonely. 
Father was absorbed in business, you spent 
much time by yourself, and I longed for 
some attractive place in which to spend my 



A COMPANIONSHIP. 



6 9 



evenings. Chester asked me to go to the 
Gilded Palace saloon, which, he said, had 
every attraction heart could wish. After 
much urging, I consented ; but on the ap- 
pointed evening you wished me to help you 
select your new suit. As I looked into the 
parlor, which you* had made so bright and 
pretty, I thought some other night would 
do for my visit to the Gilded Palace, so I 
yielded to your persuasions, and spent the 
evening at home. But after that I found 
every evening the same, for you always had 
some pleasant entertainment in store for 
me; and I finally came to the conclusion 
that our parlor was palace enough for me, 
and that it would be difficult to find more 
attractive company than that of my own 
sweet sister. 

"And, Margie," he continued, while a 
soft light came into his eyes, " although I 
was not a Christian, you talked so freely 
with me about your religious experiences, 
that I could not fail to see the deep satis- 
faction you found in the religion of Jesus 
Christ. I soon came to yearn for the 



70 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



peace and rest that you evidently enjoyed, 
and so I was led to yield my heart to the 
Savior. Ah ! little Margie, if all sisters were 
as good and wise as mine has been, the 
saloon-keepers would find few victims 
among our young men." 

While Margie Nelson listened to this 
candid confession, her heart was raised to 
God in gratitude for the blessed assurance 
of having been the instrument through 
which he saved her noble brother. 



Chapter IX. 



THE LEAGUE A BROTHERHOOD. 
HAT is your caste? is a question 



V V with thirteen answers in India. In 
America, " Our Clique " is born of sin. Sin 
breaks up society into sections. Sin draws 
lines between the ins and the outs. Sin 
arrays trusts hostile to non-trusts. Sin 
establishes fraternities less broad than all 
humanity. *Sin drives away Cain as a fugi- 
tive, realizing but one concord ; viz., that 
every man's hand is against him. Sin 
grooves out narrow-gauge sentiments and 
opinions, but broad-gauge roads for the sin- 
ner. Sin puts enmity between capital and 
labor. Sin imports the fuel of discord, 
quarried from the coal-pits of death. Sin 
grows the thorns of oppression, and pro- 
duces the condition of master and slave. 
Sin lays unequal burdens in tariffs and 
taxes, and unequal yokes upon the necks of 
the people. Sin falsifies our statistics, and 




72 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



corrupts white figures into untruthfulness. 
Sin bequeaths the iron heel of despotism, 
and the iron wedge between man and man. 
In fact, there is no discord or disease on 
earth or in hell but what sin has intro- 
duced. 

The havoc here enumerated is baneful 
chiefly in the social realm of our race. 
What remedy can we apply early, and 
rely upon ? for the disease is not infantile, 
to be endured once with future exemption. 
What will disperse and destroy the cause, 
counteract its seeds, and introduce so- 
cial health? Eureka! Make an Epworth 
League. Let it deal with the cases in 
youth. Let it be comprehensive enough to 
encompass every child of Adam. Let the 
omnipresent "whosoevers" of the Gospels 
be all gathered in. Give sin no residue to 
corrupt with its epidemic while a few elect 
are in the hospitals of salvation. 

The first great remedy for sin is to 
break down all partitions among men, and 
gather all into a common brotherhood. 
Secondly, bind them all together in a bond of 



A BROTHERHOOD. 



73 



common sympathy and Christian equality. 
But this can be effected only by uniting 
them all in sympathy with our elder 
brother, Christ. 

But what we have described and pre- 
scribed is the precise work of the Epworth 
League. We could preach without end on 
the value of exercise to a convalescent. So 
the League arrays all its members into 
committees for exercise. And every indus- 
try of their regime knits stronger fibers in 
the universal ligature. 

There is an instrument called a hemi- 
dyamometer, which is to determine how 
high up the throbbings of arterial blood will 
send the mercury. We recognize in the 
League a sort of hemidyamometer, whose 
province it is to equalize and lift the pulsa- 
tions of all its members. Paul's patent 
hemidyamometer is thus described: "Ye 
are all one in Christ Jesus. " Peter's pat- 
ent is similar: "God hath made of one 
blood all the nations." The principle of 
action of all these patents is this: A great, 
universal brotherhood — Christ as the Elder 



74 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



Brother, and then all hearts set to throb- 
bing, through Christ, with the great heart 
of God. On this principle the League is 
incessantly augmenting and cultivating the 
universal brotherhood through the God-man. 

" Help us to help each other, Lord, 
Each other's cross to bear." 

The first defect in all human fraternities 
is, that their metes and bounds are so nar- 
row that not all people are eligible to mem- 
bership. The ineligible are, by necessity, 
ostracized and neglected. The League has 
a gospel catholicity, that goes into the high- 
ways to compel them to come in. 

The next defect in the otherwise beauti- 
ful systems of human fraternity is the lack 
of a Christ in the midst. That lack is 
fatal and mortal. The League exalts the 
Christ as the central Person for its worship, 
its Bond of union, its Chief among ten 
thousand. To this purpose the League's 
other excellencies are subservient and sub- 
ordinate. The final formula of each League 
chapter is to 

" Crown him Lord of all." 



A BROTHERHOOD. 



75 



The defect of many brotherhoods and 
fraternities is, to entirely ignore sisterhood. 
A sweeping society that is to evangelize 
the human family, must recognize and fra- 
ternize women and families. The most de- 
vout members and efficient workers in al- 
most every chapter of the League are 
among the women. Sweetest in song, 
purest in sympathy, most lenient in charity, 
she is easiest and soonest embellished with 
the graces of the Spirit into a herald of 
evangels. 

But the most fatal defect of brother- 
hoods is the cessation of membership at 
some date. At best, death severs the fra- 
ternal bond in merely human societies. But 
the League, as the junior partner of the 
Church, has its reunion beyond death, and 
that reunion is eternal life. The League 
influence is incomplete until it witnesses 
its members die the death of the right- 
eous, and treasures a faith in the final re- 
union. 

The holy utility of the League will be 
better estimated in the undying influence 



76 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

of its workers when they have gone to their 
reward. Others mount this monumental 
aggregate of the broken column, and up 
rises the united influence like a Colossus 
of the ages. This emargination of the in- 
fluences of the generations extends the 
brotherhood of man by welding links in 
being's endless chain. 

If a thousand years of time should yet 
roll, and the League is, during all this time, 
a living agent for God and the right, it is 
a pleasing anticipation that the record of 
the members of to-day is imperishable. 
It is wise to invest in the richly paying 
stock of a concern that is never to 
wind up. 

It remains to speak of the closeness and 
friendliness of this brotherhood. Its bonds, 
beginning as gossamer webs, have increased 
to cables of love. This makes this brother- 
hood strong as gravitation which binds the 
stars. The members of the League, if 
true, are to be affiliated by the love of 
Jesus. 

Surely, then, if the League is to include 



A BROTHERHOOD. 



77 



both the sons and daughters of the Church ; 
if it is to unite them into a holy and per- 
petual union for the highest good to all ; 
if it be the nursery of the Church for fold- 
ing the lambs of the flock, let its brother- 
hood be given a charter to take precedence 
of all charters save the Bible. 



Chapter X. 



THE LEAGUE A PROMOTER OF UNITY. 

THE Epworth League had birth out of 
the throes of a holy desire in the 
Church for the embodiment of a complete 
unity in a society. The Church has had 
several blessed societies for young people, 
and their memory will be locally revered 
forever. They were clean and evangelical, 
but their birth and influence were local. 
Soon they began to grow and emarginate 
with each other; then to clash, not in spirit, 
but in search of membership; and, hence, 
to divide into ranks. Such partition ex- 
posed to friction. Should it go on, until 
one should say, "I am of Paul, and I of 
Apollos, and I of Cephas ?" There could 
not well be more than one universally pop- 
ular and strong society, occupying the same 
ground and tending to the same goal, in our 
beloved Methodism. 

Philosophy teaches that two bodies can 

78 



A PROMOTER OF UNITY. 79 

not occupy the same space at the same time ; 
geometry adds that from one point to an- 
other but one straight line can be drawn. 
The realm of our young people's hearts and 
work is a denominational space ; heaven and 
earth are two points in the geometry of our 
Church; and a straight line is the Chris- 
tian's narrow path to be drawn by his walk 
from earth to heaven. 

These facts were as absolutely demon- 
strable to our fathers, in our ecclesiastical 
organization, as they were in the realm of 
science. Each young people's society had 
a soul of action. The fathers did not be- 
lieve in the transmigration of souls; but 
they did believe in that emblematic mar- 
riage which makes two souls one. Hence 
they besought God in prayer to create such 
a unity among these various societies. As 
loving co-workers with God, we believe, 
representatives of all the existing societies 
assembled at Cleveland, Ohio, with God in 
the midst, to perfect that union. We think 
them divinely directed in evolving this one 
grand unity — the Epworth League. 



8o THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



It embodies the essence and excellence 
of all the others. Being a unity, it can 
not clash in its own exclusive field ; it can 
not be divided in discordant interests. 

From this harmonious unity great results 
may be realized. We need but step into 
our sphere as political beings for an illus- 
tration. Two theories struggled for ascend- 
ency in the Constitutional Convention of 
1787. One was State sovereignty, the other 
National supremacy — thirteen sovereign in- 
terests, or only one. While the latter pre- 
vailed in the main, yet a concession was 
made in a compromise to the former to live 
on until it became the foe of National 
unity. Hence, in our memory, in order to 
preserve National unity, the sacrifice of 
half a million precious lives was required. 
But the National greatness and prosperity, 
its ongoing and prospects, demonstrate the 
wisdom of a preserved Union. So in this, 
our young people's Church-commonwealth, 
the statehood idea is to disappear, and our 
beloved Epworth League is to be a gen- 
eral theocracy, with no subordinate sover- 



A PROMOTER OF UNITY. 8l 



eignty disputing supremacy against God 
and the Church. 

The plan furnishes the utmost latitude 
and longitude of spiritual enlargement to 
Methodist youth. Such a perfect organic 
union ought to bring into sympathy and 
membership all the younger Church mem- 
bers. For example, the union brings vast 
advantage : To the enlargement and perfec- 
tion of our one organ — rather than many — 
the Epworth Herald; to the harmony of a 
work under one series of Leaflets, ema- 
nating from one set of officers; and, finally, 
to the collection of all those interests into 
one, before our charges, districts, annual 
conferences, camp-meetings, etc., for the 
attainment of stronger and better results. 
The writer was personally a zealous mem- 
ber of the Methodist Alliance ; but observ- 
ing that the Epworth League was created 
by marvelous wisdom' and unanimity for 
the whole Church, and that the spirit and 
methods of the Alliance were incorporated 
into the League, he had no more hesitation 

in transferring all his sentiment and love 

6 



82 



THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



and his name to the new organization than 
a loving maiden has, on her wedding-day, 
in assuming the destiny and new name of 
her husband. 

Another feature: There are societies 
which invite a union of young people of 
various denominations. None of these were 
of Methodist origin. Regarding the idea 
of perfect union and the resultant power 
for good, we fear an interdenominational 
society must tend to weaken the sum of 
aggregated individual power. We believe 
the several denominations ordained and 
blessed of God with missions under his 
guidance. With Presbyterian blood from 
his four grandparents, and Baptist blood 
from his two parents, the writer can not be 
accused of bigotry in asserting that each 
young people's society should be in ex- 
clusive union with and subordination to its 
own denomination. . It is not improper to 
regard a young people's society as a feeder 
to the Church — in fact, a junior department 
of the Church. 

Now, while all the principal doctrines 



A PROMOTER OF UNITY. 83 



are the same in Christendom — as, for ex- 
ample, in the Apostles' Creed — yet these are 
minor questions, vitally affecting denom- 
inational success, and these young people's 
societies have the age and afford oppor- 
tunity for indoctrination. We insist on 
the importance of denominational success 
in all sects, inasmuch as the whole Church 
is composed of denominations, and the 
success of each is the success of all. Each 
denomination can far better train, indoctri- 
nate, save, and help the Lord give power 
to its own children than intrust them to a 
foundlings' hospital, from which emerging 
they may fail to recognize any spiritual 
mother, and become alienated from all 
Churches. 

Undenominational societies must tend to 
weaken all the denominations, and hence 
the Christian host. It is certainly wisdom 
in every Methodist child to affiliate with 
our own society, the Epworth League. 



Chapter XL 



THE LEAGUE AN ENTERTAINMENT. 

THE wear of this world is prodigious. 
The earth is racing about the sun sixty- 
eight thousand miles per hour, and we 
are gliding onward with it. There is no 
stagnation. No wonder there are earth- 
quakes, and volcanoes, and hurricanes, and 
cyclones, and waves of the sea. The won- 
der is that this rushing, seething mass does 
not tumble into instant chaos. But, how- 
ever great the friction, our movements and 
our slumbers of probation are all to be on 
this earth. There are nervous people, and 
they too must be quieted on this nervous 
earth. If they should seek quiet, and it 
were possible in the moon or some planet, 
the restlessness would be the same. Even 
children need relaxation and recreation. 

Then there is a sentiment of the novel 
and marvelous in mankind to be satisfied. 

These external and internal elements re- 
84 



AN ENTERTAINMENT. 



85 



veal the factors of a problem for the Chris- 
tian and the philosopher. It is this : How 
shall suitable and innocent entertainment 
and relaxation be arranged for our children 
and youth ? The answer : Must guard their 
habits, associations, absorptions, and future 
utilities. If the usefulness and entertain- 
ment can be happily blended, the plan will 
be an ingenious triumph. Like Newton's 
law of gravitation, the answer comes from 
the Epworth League. Like Newton's law, 
we have here a moral law that binds youth 
to youth, sex to sex, all to the Church, and 
the Church to its God. 

Success in all the League's six depart- 
ments is itself an entertainment. The 
prosperity of one's plans is an ever-increas- 
ing pleasure. A stated meeting with es- 
teemed friends is always a gratification. 
To be confided in, with something to do of- 
ficially as a committeeman, is as inspiring to 
children as to congressmen. To hear good 
reports, involving successes in which we 
are interested, is a mental nervine. To 
feel that .moral health is in all the 



86 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



atmosphere, has the stimulant of a sani- 
tarium. 

In the League the entertainment is by- 
no means confined to the " Department of 
Entertainment," though this department 
directly undertakes to feast our fancies, 
charm our visions, and gratify our tastes 
and intellects. Music, which always min- 
gles on the program, is a fascination; ex- 
cursions and picnics, which are to be pro- 
vided, are almost intoxicating in their 
entertainment; and, if amusements be 
guarded from sinful admixture, they also 
coalesce as the very essence of entertain- 
ment. 

A very bad heart can not well be charmed 
with an Epworth League, while the heart- 
remains bad. But the League, by divine 
help, is to attract and recover the bad heart, 
and inspire it to seek a new heart. All 
God's servants are evangelizers, and all the 
Church's plans are formulated with that 
end. The League's mission is evangeliza- 
tion. It is superfluous to hunt up people 
who are not lost. All the way of life your 



AN ENTERTAINMENT. 



87 



aid is invoked to change bad people into 
good, and good ones into better. Part of 
the constant entertainment, as you go, is to 
witness this transformation. There is no 
spiritual kaleidoscope equal to this view. 
As the most truly rapturous exhibition to 
the Christian is a clear, fresh conversion, 
so the most delicious entertainment of a 
League-worker is to witness the upbuild- 
ing of moral character among members. 

All this entertainment of the League 
has an environment that the Church has 
built and sanctioned. Moral purity and 
moral health ought reasonably to be the 
outcome. We must not forget that, hungry 
and empty as the young soul gets, it must 
be entertained. The evil and harmful will 
be certain to intrude, unless wholesome 
substitutes be speedily provided. The 
prodigal son, in . all his riots, was seeking 
entertainment. The longings and affec- 
tions of a human heart reveal as absolute 
a vacuum as Torricelli ever found in a tube. 
The League insists that the filling of this 
heart-vacuum shall not be with refuse- 



88 THK EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



dumpings, like filling the lake-front for 
the Columbian Exhibition, but shall be with 
health, truth, and purity in all its enter- 
tainments. 

We premise God bestowed eyes and ears 
upon people for a benevolent purpose. If 
otherwise, then the deaf, dumb, and blind 
are the favored ones, and the asylums for 
them are the true Edens. But the Creator 
of flowers with beauty and fragrance, and 
of birds with song and sympathy, made a 
respondent vision and symphony in man to 
entertain him, and lead his listening ears 
and eager eyes to nature's God. The 
League is in harmony with nature and with 
God. It was the first sinner who made 
use of the beautiful trees in the Garden as 
a bulwark against an angry God. A sinner 
can not be permitted unlimited entertain- 
ment anywhere in nature, for he will per- 
vert the blessings, and use nature's retreats 
as improvised bulwarks against his Creator. 
Then every bush is an officer. 

If men will only be reconciled to the 
Creator and be in league with his children, 



AN ENTERTAINMENT. 89 

nature assumes an inimitable face of beauty, 
and it charms the eyes and ears of the soul. 
So every exertion of the Epworth League 
is to attract men away from entertainments 
of the carnal — as appetite, passion, ambi- 
tion. But it gives liberty to the mental 
and moral faculties while they stay upon 
innocent grounds. The world's entertain- 
ments are essentially licentious and cor- 
rupt. Dancing, gaming, racing, drinking, 
theatricals, and the like, all agree in min- 
istering to the carnal nature with hurtful 
result ; while literature, music, painting, 
and picnics with nature, are morally health- 
ful. But to array Christian works and wor- 
ship as the chief concerns, assures the 
highest beatitudes of healthful soul and 
body. The Beatitudes of Christ conferred 
no blessing on the merely carnal and 
sensual. 

On the high plains of Christian duty 
the League would hold all its entertain- 
ments. The world's creeds write the fol- 
lowing, in order of importance as to our 
threefold division: Physical, mental, moral. 



90 THE EP WORTH LEAGUE. 

On the contrary, the Epworth League 
agrees with God, the Bible, and the Church 
- in reversing the order of these divisions — 
moral, mental, physical. All its recreations 
are in harmony with this arrangement. 
The moral is of supreme importance; the 
mental is its subordinate ; while the phys- 
ical is to be ever obedient to the moral 
first, and after to the mental. Whatsoever 
is more than these cometh of evil. 



Chapter XII. 



THE LEAGUE A GUIDE. 

IN the early settlement of this country, 
the lone pilgrim often found he had been 
preceded by some benevolent pioneer ; for 
some ax had blazed the trees along the 
bridle-path, "and set up signals for those 
who should come after. Otherwise, the 
wilderness would shelter the bleaching 
bones of many a lost traveler. In the next 
generation, when settlements touched, and 
roads became numerous and crossed often, 
at each doubtful turn guide-boards were 
nailed up, by authority of the Government, 
having printed directions of the way ; and 
lost people were only such as would not, or 
could not, read. 

The earliest consciousness of every child 
is a memory of life's first cross-roads, as it 
were, attended with a dubious peering into 
the unknown, and a realization of bewil- 
derment like a dream. Then these cross- 

91 



92 THE KPWORTH LEAGUE. 

roads, with sign-boads, are photographed 
from the visual of the eye to the moral 
experience of the life. It is a tiny, rip- 
pling wavelet, from some unknown shore. 
Some broken branch of evergreen is floated 
upon the wavelet to our feet. Then a 
broken mast is borne on the next crest to 
land. And then a bruised and dead mari- 
ner is cast upon the beach. The young 
life, beholding the sea yield such fragmental 
trophies, reasons thus: " Beyond this ocean 
of time there must be a land where ever- 
greens grow ; where broken masts of 
wrecked vessels had conscious owners ; 
and where owners, if without sufficient 
guidance, are in peril while aiming for the 
shores beyond." But how does it affect the 
child-faith when the Old Sea Captain of all 
these waters, well versed in navigation, 
dripping with the salt of the sea, aged with 
service, invincible in multiplied voyages, 
launches a ship which is absolutely im- 
pregnable against storms and rocks and 
seas? 

What if the Captain is thoroughly 



A GUIDE. 



93 



known to be infallible in safety, omnipo- 
tent in power, omniscient in wisdom, and 
infinite in love? What if he thoroughly 
controls the five oceans of earth, with their 
adjacent continents and included islands, 
and is just as familiar a Master over that 
dread ocean of the vast unknown and aw- 
fully profound, just beyond which lie the 
hills of immortality and the city of God ? 
What if he produce proof — valid in any 
court — that he has spread out by crea- 
tion an upper universe, free from sin, and 
has embellished it with a spired city, full 
of mansions, which he offers free, with safe 
and free transportation and subsistence for- 
ever? It would create such expectation 
that none should fail to embark, and in 
confident allegiance cry: u Thou shalt guide 
me by thy counsel, and afterward receive 
me to glory." 

You may now see we are not using para- 
bles, but have introduced the first conscious 
experience of every child. No romance is 
comparable with solemn truth; no waters 
like the bay of time and the ocean of eter- 



94 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

nity; no captain like the Christ; no chart 
like the Bible ; no want like the great, con- 
scious desolation of sin, weakness, and ig- 
norance. With the sign-boards all down, 
and the roads obliterated, and moral 
wrecks floating upon our shores, and 
the dark, deep ocean of the unknown 
just beyond the ken of our coast-line, 
and only a sprig of evergreen hope float- 
ing upon an echo — "I am the resurrection 
and the life" — what a great salvation it 
is of the tender Christ as he proffers his 
guidance ! 

But those gracious and timely guide- 
boards, and those trees — blazed by the au- 
thority of Heaven — how opportune! The 
Epworth League chapters are veritable 
guide-boards and blazed trees. The young 
traveler, as he runs, can here clearly read: 
"This is the way, walk ye in it;" "I am 
the way, the truth, and the life;" and in all 
languages the superscription — " This is 
the King of the Jews." It is the glory and 
authority of these Epworth guide-boards 
that they are founded on the authority of 



A GUIDE. 



95 



the Word. Their index always points truth- 
fully, and at each crossing some one of the 
roads leads heavenward. 

If these metaphors be true teachers, 
then the Epworth League has authority 
from God and his Church to guide the lost 
children of our race upon safe roads and to 
heavenly goals. 

The solemn importance of such a guide 
as the League, under God, is more impress- 
ive when we see the unreliability and fatal- 
ity attending mere human guides. The 
world is replete with false and blind 
guides. Satan employs an army of guides. 
The cemeteries are full of victims who were 
misguided to their death. The hospitals 
teem with souls, wounded w r hile under the 
care of vicious guides. 

It is the ostensible profession of every 
book and paper extant to guide the chil- 
dren of men. All private conversation and 
all public oration consist of voices either 
asking or proffering guidance. Some voices, 
as utterly ignorant of the way as a lost 
sheep would be in dictating it to the good 



9 6 



THE EP WORTH LEAGUE. 



shepherd, set themselves tip for reliable 
guides. The pictures of books and period- 
icals are transformed into guides. Feet in 
the ball-room profess to guide other feet 
through this world. Saloons, supporting 
the foaming index that points within, with 
a glittering halo of stolen adjectives, pilot 
souls in through their front doors, to emerge 
out through the gates of death. As much 
as each young soul may have his guardian 
angel, he more certainly has the offer of a 
guiding demon. 

If the true and the false guides alike 
offer, how solemn is human choice! how 
fearful responsibility! God is true, his 
Church is true ; the Epworth League, being 
a movement of the Church, is also a true 
guide. The good, the beautiful, and the 
true compose its faithful plans and offers. 
Its fidelity is certified in its pure and useful 
results. It becomes a gratification, like a 
constant benediction, that every young man 
and woman can be so faithfully trained 
and guided by this safe society of the 
Church. 



A GUIDE. 



97 



It is easy to account for so many wrecked 
fortunes and blasted lives, when we see so 
many youth rejecting all guidance and 
taking the hazardous risk of guiding self. 
"Seest thou a man wise in his own con- 
ceit? there is more hope of a fool than of 
him. ,, Self-guidance is the prognostic of 
certain failure. Poor dupes of appearances 
are those who, without compass or com- 
panionship, would hazard the breakers of 
the moral sea and the monsters of the 
moral land. Suicidal is the youth who ac- 
tually tempts the tempter to so whisper all 
his designs that they may appear as self- 
devised by the tempted. 

One of the follies of youth is to feel 
over-wise. To surround a career with 
honor, health, fortune, usefulness, holiness, 
and to urge the candidate to faithful per- 
severance to the end of life, divine guid- 
ance must directly or indirectly come. 
The guidance and association of the League, 
sanctioned by the Church, must be help- 
ful. Son, daughter, seek its fold next to 
that of the Church and your God. Father, 
7 



98 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

mother, if you would not lose hold of 
your child forever, see that, besides 
home help and other Church helps, he 
adds also the help of the Epworth 
League, 



Chapter XIII. 



THE LEAGUE A MEMENTO ETERNAL. 
'AN the League furnish us memories 



that will be pleasing in old age and 
in our heavenly home ? And can the League 
also bequeath a pleasing memory concern- 
ing us to others? Some way, moral pho- 
tography casts the images of action forward 
into the daylight of futurity. There is 
nothing hidden that shall not be made 
manifest. Of things said and done, the 
reverberations travel like echoes, on and 
on, into the wave pulsations of the great 
hereafter. While some things appear to be 
temporarily obliterated, yet nothing is an- 
nihilated from memory. The experiences 
of this earth must all be rehearsed by the 
recollections within us, in the ages and 
eras and cycles of our immortal state. 

We can not be indifferent to these mar- 
velous facts. We must be intensely inter- 
ested while we here accumulate a capital 




99 



IOO THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

stock — not transferable — of words, actions, 
influences, that shall abide forever, as the 
soul's wealth of memory. Memory will 
escape our shrouds, and soar away with 
our souls, and hold up its pictures with a 
deathless fidelity. If so, and if we want 
pure pictures to adorn our house beautiful 
forever, it is imperative that thought, word, 
and action be washed pure and worthy of 
eternal life. 

More, if a dark and corrupt life also 
faithfully flings its memory-pictures, like 
shadows, into the deep darkness of eternal 
death, making darkness darker, and if no 
memory dies to those who forever die, then 
how earnestly must our actions here guard 
with the vigilance of dear life from those 
pictures now which make the negatives of 
future woe! 

We are resolved into record-makers. 
We register all the records, and file away 
for future examination. We bind the files 
into a perpetual autobiography. Some of 
the questions in our book of memory are 
these: What have I done for humanity? 



A MEMENTO ETERNAL. IOI 

How many souls will rise up to call me 
blessed forever? Are any sins unblotted? 
Is the record washed and purged? Have I 
done what I could? 

Young life starts with a blank-book of 
memory. O how white and clean it is! 
Will it be kept unsmirched? Our gravest 
fears are well-grounded. We can aid the 
young. Our aid in the balances may 
swing them safely into purity and right- 
eousness. Before God, we must seize the 
opportunity. They must, somehow, be 
committed to Jesus. 

The Epworth League is our photograph 
gallery, where we finish the pictures for 
eternity. We will not be ashamed of the 
glorious record, if faithful to the spirit and 
work of the League. Its charities and 
works of love, its inspiring songs and fer- 
vent devotions, its helpful influences and 
bracing associations, are creating healthful 
materials for the feasts of memory in the 
life that now is, and in that which is to 
come. I am persuaded that that blank- 
book, which is the diary of our daily actions, 



102 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



may be rendered the sweetest volume in 
the archives of this universe. Yonder in 
eternity, after a million years, this record 
of autobiography may be read with supreme 
felicity: u From 1890 to 1900 of our Lord's 
incarnation, while I was in the perilous 
youthhood of my earthly probation, the 
Epworth League w r as my holy field of labor 
and my safe environment. I was gloriously 
kept. And my eternal joy was pendent on 
that blessed organization which brought me 
to Jesus." 

We have thus far dwelt upon that active 
function within us called memory. But 
there is a passive sense to the word, in 
which the memory of others retains us and 
our traits in exemption from oblivion. No 
one can be indifferent as to the chronicles 
of himself which he registers upon the 
memory of others. We have said personal 
memory was an autobiography, as it were, 
for our eternity. In fact, the unwritten 
library of the world of spirits will be com- 
posed of the biographical sketches of every 
child of Adam; and each soul will pro- 



A MEMENTO ETERNAL. 103 



duce a duplicate of all the familiar spirits 
of earth. 

What will the thousands of souls, who 
witnessed the works we have done, treas- 
ure up concerning us? How many albums 
in reminiscence of us will need no revision 
to shine in the white light of eternity? 
It were vastly better to have been known 
in the Epworth League than in the saloon, 
the ball-room, the haunt of fleshly gratifi- 
cation, or the den of sin. It were more 
pleasing to have this abiding record of all 
future duration, composed among these 
songs and praises and labors of charity, 
than to have the recording angel drop a 
tear and unconsciously blot our page with 
his sorrow. It would be preferable to be a 
pilgrim of toil, translated to the gates of 
paradise from the League, rather than to 
be arrayed in the rich shroud of the 
millionaire. 



Chapter XIV. 



THE LEAGUE THE LIGHT BRIGADE OF THE 
CHURCH MILITANT. 

HPHE tread of armies and the ongoing of 



1 artillery are thrilling events in the 
world's history. They presage power in 
motion, and anticipate conquests and vic- 
tories. The favorite metaphor with the 
Church is military activity, and it is aptly 
called the Chufch militant. The name 
suggests many points of analogy. The 
spiritual struggle involves life or death; it 
is to revolutionize the status of the foes. 
The enemy is aggressive, claiming every- 
thing; the resources are nothing, save faith 
and prayer; God is our ally, and the con- 
federation is thus invincible. 

Military education and organization are 
the prime requisites of a good soldier; 
afterwards he must be armed. For the 
first named purpose, governments establish 
military and naval academies for the proper 




THE LIGHT BRIGADE. 105 

training of officers; while recruiting and 
training camps become the rendezvous for 
the enlisted rank and file. 

So, also, the Church, as a veteran army 
for service, has ordained the Epworth League 
as a training-school for officers and men, 
antecedent to veteran work in the Church 
proper. The preliminary in the League 
furnishes the acts in similitude of the com- 
ing moral battle: Here the pean of victory 
is sung in advance; here the Christian's 
panoply is brought out, and fitted on, and 
completely proven. Paul's catalogue of 
armor is adjusted; namely, the breastplate 
of righteousness, shod feet, the shield of 
faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword 
of the Spirit. The modes and purpose of 
our spiritual enemy are made known, and 
our ransomed powers are put through the 
Manual. How to advance, how to file 
right and left, how to lead an attack, how 
to storm a fort, how to gain captives for 
the Lord of hosts, and how to transform 
them into League soldiers, are all fully 
explained. 



106 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 

Many a Church is a weakling because 
deficient in trained leaders. One who 
wisely knows how, what, and when to siug, 
is like a brave armor-bearer in battle. One 
who can lead a meeting of prayer and ex- 
perience, so as to fan the flames of vigor- 
ous life, and because of brevity leave an 
unsurfeited spiritual hunger, is a valuable 
officer. These gifts are chiefly the results 
of training, as in the Moodys, the Spur- 
geons, the Simpsons. The League becomes 
the training-school for them. 

But the League does more than to lie 
idle, in safe camps for training. It is an 
important division of the main army — the 
Church. It is the light brigade for fling- 
ing forward re-enforcements, for harassing 
the wings of the enemy, for hurrying for- 
ward as an advance guard, for surrounding 
the foe in retreat, for gathering captives, 
and for anticipating the enemy everywhere 
with important strategy. Precisely so, the 
League is fervent in keeping alive the 
evangelical spirit; it pioneers into new 
neighborhoods, where new Churches are to 



THE LIGHT BRIGADE. I07 

be planted ; it stands to rescue tempted and 
endangered young Christians; it attracts 
many a new face into the congregation, 
and adds interest to every service by num- 
bers and spirituality. 

In military tactics, flying artillery is in- 
dispensable. So in the Church militant. 
John saw a " mighty angel flying through 
the air and preaching the everlasting gos- 
pel." John's vision forces before us a 
vision of the League as a light brigade, 
without impediments ; radical in first Chris- 
tian love ; ubiquitous in spiritual aggression 
and conquest. 

We continue the similitude. The League 
often becomes the army of invasion and of 
occupation. While the Church is the nu- 
cleus, the head-quarters, the spiritual cen- 
ter, yet the ardent young Leaguers, fervent 
in duty, scour the neutral ground beyond 
Church bounds for additional conquest. 
Unconverted people may have " associate" 
membership in the League. The evident 
design is to lead in from associate to active 
relations. Thus probationers, under an- 



Io8 THE EPWORTH LEAGUE. 



other name, are attracted into glorious 
Christian activity. Thus the League be- 
comes an army of invasion, where the 
Church proper may not intrude — since we 
may only " persuade men." When this 
ground is persistently held under the ban- 
ner of the Cross until the Church can act, 
then associate, persuaded men become 
Christian men. In these maneuvers of 
evangelization the League becomes an army 
of occupation. 

" When that illustrious day shall rise, 
And all thine armies shine 
In robes of victory through the skies, 
The glory shall be thine." 



Chapter XV. 



THE LEAGUE THE SUPPLY OF CERTAIN UN- 
PROVIDED WANTS. 

"\ X yTE believe God's Church is as perfect 



V V as human material can be. We also 
believe, with millions of others, that the 
people called Methodists are as complete 
and efficient for saving souls as the people 
of any Christian name or order in this 
world. But Methodism has that magnani- 
mous elasticity which seeks to array and 
equip every improved auxiliary. Hence 
Methodism has from the first founded col- 
leges for both boys and girls ; she has from 
her beginning been an ardent advocate of 
Sunday-schools ; she has continued to foster 
benevolences, until she has nearly half a 
score of large chartered societies, so as to 
cast her benign influences in as many de- 
partments of work. These are not formal, 
but financial, and create Bibles, tracts, 




109 



IIO THE EP WORTH LEAGUE. 

libraries, schools, church-buildings, bread, 
and meat. 

But Christ, the greatest of Church-build- 
ers, is still building and authorizing addi- 
tions. We believe his blessing and author- 
ity are conferred upon the League that it 
may serve a special purpose. The League's 
object is set forth in Leaflet I, Article II, 
of the General Constitution : 

"The object of the League is to promote 
intelligent and loyal piety in the young 
members and friends of the Church, to aid 
them in the attainment of purity of heart 
and in constant growth in grace, and to 
train them in works of mercy and help." 

It has been demonstrated that when old, 
experienced Christians and the young and 
timid meet together in social service, a 
commendable and beautiful courtesy im- 
poses a deferential silence upon the young. 
But that silence is to their religious detri- 
ment. The older members often — not 
wisely — consume all the time, and the 
younger fail to receive a blessing, or growth, 
or religious training. Thus their path to 



SUPPLY OF UNPROVIDED WANTS. Ill 

backsliding is made easy. The Church 
would not be wise to train dumb witnesses 
for truth. To correct these difficulties the 
Church creates the Epworth League. It is 
for the young people. Here the young may 
grow by full exercise. The division, how- 
ever, of these persons is but temporary. 
The fence is not of barbed wire ; but, like 
lines of latitude and longitude, it is only 
imaginary. In the Church proper — which 
is not superseded, but aided — there is no 
division between old and young. All are 
one body and spirit. 

The pastor, however old he may be, is 
still a member of the chapter and of the 
cabinet of the League. He is virtually the 
controlling adviser in all its work. Sab- 
bath-school teachers, and others intimately 
associated with the young in social and ed- 
ucational life, full of warm sympathy with 
them, should also be welcomed to the 
League. Their experience is needful for 
its largest helpfulness and usefulness. Cer- 
tainly, if this organization can attract each 
son and daughter of the Church in youth. 



112 THE EP WORTH LEAGUE. 



and keep them safer to present to the 
Church later as trained veterans, then 
the League has a lawful apology for its 
existence. 

Another fact: Age tends toward con- 
servatism; youth is radical. Youth looks 
to results rather than to forms. It is the 
infusion of new blood, pulsating stronger 
and wider. Paul welcomed young Timothy 
into the fellowship of the Churches. It 
was well surmised that the League would 
quicken the Church itself by this infusion 
of fresh blood. It is a spiritual elixir, and 
causes the old ecclesiastical arteries and 
veins to vibrate with more potent throbs. 
If such a revival can be thus made self- 
acting within the Church control, it is a 
glorious achievement of grace. 



Chapter XVI. 



CONCLUSION. 

DEAR READER, our God is organizing 
his forces for the further and final 
conquest of the world. Among these forces, 
he has impressed his servants to institute 
the Ep worth League. 

You are solicited to act in concert with 
the movement. Of course your prayers, 
influences, and indorsement will be valu- 
able; but the vital essence of your respon- 
sibility and your accountability will depend 
upon what you have done. 

The Epworth League aims, first, to an- 
ticipate the works of the devil by reaching, 
if possible, children so young as to find 
them unoccupied and unpossessed, and then 
to fill them, and train them into a growth 
of purity, for Christ and the Church, from 
the cradle to the grave. But, in the sec- 
ond place, if the League finds children or 

8 113 



114 THE KPWORTH LEAGUE. 

youth tempted and preoccupied with evil, 
it is to present them inducements to purity 
and righteousness, in such beautiful and 
charming array as to win every soul for 
Christ. 

It is trusted you will not be a stum- 
bling-block — either of the obstruction va- 
riety, or a zero of illogical neutrality. Be 
so consistent as to cheerfully contribute all 
your ransomed powers — what you are, and 
what you ought to be — and that enthusi- 
astically, in furtherance of the League 
movement. 

My vision is arm in arm with the vision 
of St. John. And I am eagerly eying 
each trophy-bearing spirit, in the " great 
multitude which no man could number, " 
to see if your washed soul is in this home- 
bound procession. And my vision reveals 
that the throngs entering the gates, in this 
later procession, are denser and of younger 
average spirits than the advance-guard 
which John saw. The first-fruits of the 
Sunday-school and the Epworth League 
are the golden sheaves in this harvest 



CONCLUSION. 



of the world. And my vision will become 
a jubilation, when thousands rise up in 
that day to call you " blessed " for the 
works you have done in the Epworth 
League. 



APPENDIX. 



i. 

LET it be kept in mind that the Bpworth League 
is an organization for Christian service. Heretofore 
we have been organizing young people for amusement 
or entertainment. The idea has prevailed that they 
are not competent to take up the real work of the 
Church ; that they must wait until some years of dis- 
cipline, of tutorage, of maturing growth, are past. 
But the process was not a little like that of the mother 
who charged her boys " never to go near the water 
until they had learned to swim." The things at which 
we set them did not help them to know how to work 
for Christ. Our organizations rather dissipated than 
developed efficiency, But the Epworth League pro- 
poses to set them right at work. It is the young life 
of the Church organized for the work of the Church. 
It is not pastime, but earnest, joyful service, which it 
contemplates. 

The formula of the League puts before the whole 
Church a model of systematized Church-work. Not 
perfect, probably, in all its details — not adapted in all 
its arrangements to every Church field — but yet, with 
all its imperfections and limitations, a model. 

And the Bpworth League may prove to be a train- 
ing-school, not only to the young people of the 
Church, but to the older people as well, in systematic 
Christian work. 

117 



xi8 



APPENDIX. 



We append the plan of work as outlined for the 
Leagues by the General Board of Control. While no 
chapter is compelled to take up all the departments, 
or all the items of any department, every busy, help- 
ful Church will probably find something to do in each 
of these divisions of work : 

i st. Department of Christian Work. — First Vice- 
President,Xhairman. 

(a) Young People's Prayer-meeting. 

(b) Spiritual Welfare of Members. 

(V ) Christian Work among the Young. 

(d) Sunday-school Interests. 

(e) Missionary Work. 

(f) Open-air Meetings. 

2d. Department of Mercy and Hei<p.— Second Vice- 
President, Chairman. 
(a) Systematic Visitation. 
(ft) Temperance. 

(c) Tract Distribution. 

(d) Junior League Work. 

(e) Home Mission Work. 

(f) Social Purity. 

(g) Employment Bureau. 

3d. Department of Literary Work. — Third Vice- 
President, Chairman. 

(a) Bible Study. 

( b ) Lectures and Literary Work, 

(c) Lyceums, Libraries, and Educational Work. 

(d) Church Literature. 

(e) Ep worth League Readings. 
{/) C. L. S. C. Readings. 



APPENDIX. 



II 9 



4th. Department of Entertainment. — Fourth 
Vice-President, Chairman. 

(a) Reception and Introduction of Members. ; 

(b) Socials and Social Entertainments. 

( c ) Music for all Meetings. 

(d) Excursions and Picnics. 

(e) Amusements for all Meetings. 

(f) Badges, etc. 

5th. Department of Correspondence. — Secretary, 
Chairman. 

(a) All Records. 

( b ) Correspondence with Central Office. 

( c ) Correspondence with Absent Members. 

(d ) Historical and Other Statistics. 

( e ) Record of Literary Work. 

6th. Department of Finance. — Treasurer, Chairman. 

(a) All Regular Finance. 

(b) Expense of Departments. 

(c) Collection of Dues. 

(d) Raising of Fuuds. 

(e) Expenditures. 



II. 

The Ep worth League is neither a rival nor a col- 
league of Chautauqua. Its mission lies along another 
line. It is as "pre-eminently a spiritual movement as 
Chautauqua is an intellectual. The difference may, 
perhaps, be expressed as follows : Chautauqua stands 
for an intellectual movement, with a religious basis ; 



120 



APPENDIX. 



Epworth stands for a religious movement, with an in- 
tellectual basis. Epworth's aim is to make young 
disciples efficient servants of Christ and the Church. 
That involves, firsts intense spirituality, complete con- 
secration, the impartation of the gifts of the Spirit. 
But, secondly, it involves intelligence — such discipline 
of the mental powers as shall enable the young Chris- 
tian to think vigorously for Christ; such knowledge 
of Christian truth as shall enable him to think clearly; 
such knowledge of men and methods as shall make 
him practical in all his thinking and acting. Hence 
the Epworth League proposes, as part of its great 
mission, the training of its adherents for more effi- 
cient, because more intelligent, Church membership. 
With this in view, a course of reading, made up of 
matter carefully selected, has been arranged by the 
executive committee. It is to be hoped that many 
young Methodists will avail themselves of the oppor- 
tunity which it affords to more thoroughly qualify 
themselves for usefulness in the Church. 

Below is given the names and prices of the books 
to be read this year — 1890-91 : 

The New Testament, 5 cents, upward. 

Studies in the Four Gospels, J. L. Hurlbut; 

crown, 8vo, cloth, $0 40 

The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, H. W. 

Smith ; i2mo, cloth, 60 

Short History of the Church in the United States, 

J. F. Hurst; i6mo, cloth, 40 

At the Threshold, R. C. Houghton; i2mo, cloth, 50 

From the Thames to the Trosachs, E. H. Thomp- 
son; i2mo, cloth, 50 

The five books (not including the New Testament) 
can be had for $2.25, postage or express prepaid. 



APPENDIX. 



121 



Readings on Methodism in the Epworth Herald: 

Single copies, |i 50 per year. 

Clubs of five, 1 25 " 

" ten, 1 00 " 

" twenty-five, or more, .... 80 " 

A leaflet, containing outline plan for the reading 
and other important information concerning it, will be 
sent on application. 



III. 

Some of our most gifted Methodist authors have 
given special attention to the preparation of books 
for the young. We have the material for some choice 
Epworth League libraries already stored in our de- 
positories. And the marvelous vitality of this move- 
ment is bringing new authors to the front with their 
contributions. But this volume of literature can do 
no good until set in motion. It is needed in very 
many homes, where young Methodists are preparing 
for life's great responsibilities. The Epworth League 
ought to provide a channel for its circulation. The 
organization will fail at one most important point, if 
it does not put the young life of the Church in touch 
with our busy presses and with the crowded shelves 
of our book-stores. The agents, ever vigilant and 
alert, fully appreciate this opportunity. They are 
giving special attention to the demands of this new 
movement. They are putting some of their brightest, 
best books in beautiful paper binding, to offset the 
influence of the trashy literature that circulates so 
widely among the young. They are taking great care 



122 



APPENDIX. 



that only the very best books, pure and strong and 
helpful, shall go into this special "Epworth Series." 
They have arranged and catalogued several choice, 
though small, League libraries. They have the best 
facilities for assisting pastors and committees in 
making special selections of books for this purpose. 
The value of a Church publishing-house, controlled 
by men appointed by the Church for this service, and 
responsible to the Church in its performance, was 
never more important than at this crisis. So 
much depends upon the most judicious and consci- 
entious selection of the literature which shall mold 
the thought and lives of our young people. We can 
not afford to intrust a matter of so great importance 
to irresponsible people. Let us improve the oppor- 
tunity afforded us by the League to enlarge the circu- 
lation of our own literature and the usefulness of our 
splendid Book Concern. 



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